Freak
by Maige
Summary: As an ex-carny, Arthur knew the pain that came with the job. Now confronted with a band of freaks who have nowhere to go, he summons up the will to create a place for them all; all the while falling for a violet-eyed freakshow. Carny AU. WorldxCanako, EnglandxCanako


Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia

Here's another project I'm most likely not going to continue on. Time for another reject MapleTea project!

Got the idea while reading Geek Love. It's a definite read. As TV Tropes says though, you'll either believe it's a brilliant piece of art or the most disgusting piece of filth you've ever read.

Warnings: A first person perspective, WorldxCanako in some aspects, EnglandxCanako as the main aspect, abuse against people in freakshows, people in freakshows, etc

Here we go.

* * *

"My little ones, my loves, we are all one in the same no matter our blood ship," my Mother would often say during the nights were the vans were rolling on through wild packs of mud as the rain crashed down from around us. The rain brought out the nostalgia in that woman, and every time Richard was driving on a rain-soaked night she would bring herself to her rocking chair, we would all gather up into a loose semi-circle, and she would begin.

"The kins are different, we all have different blood, but you are still all of my younglings. You must remember that no matter what Father says. He loves you just as much as I do, my young ones, even if from different men many of you were."

There were approximately seven of us. Every single one of us was born from the same Mother, the same woman that sat down with us and taught us the brief normalcies we were supposed to know in life. I was the only one who came from Richard, as everyone else came from different men. It was all part of their plan to have different parents for each child; Richard had a strange wonder for what different sperm would do with the different sorts of chemicals.

One of my older brothers Allistair would send me a look and I would pipe up, "Mum, are you going to tell us how we all came to be again?"

My Mother, in all her mannish features, from her square jaw to her bulky body, would instantly light up in a way that for once made her look as feminine as she could, and it was at these moments we could all make out more of her beautiful green eyes and stunning red locks, tresses that fell down to the back of her knees and almost made her look girlish on a good day.

"Of course Arthur," she would reply, placing her large hands neatly into her lap and raising her eyes to the ceiling of the car. "Since I was young, as young as you Allistair, I had dreamed of being a magician. I had the magickal essence within me the same as everyone that had come before me, the same as many of you do, but the times woman were more appropriate to be the lovely assistants rather than be those of magical lore themselves."

Her eyes would then shift back down to us, so rarely warm and gentle. "Your Father helped me with that, my younglings. The carnival had come into town and curious if they would take anyone like me in, I had gone straight on ahead, earning the money through as much chores as I could handle and sneaking out so my parents wouldn't find out."

The youngest of us, Peter, would cup his hands over his mouth and giggle at the whole idea of our Mother disobeying her parents. She had made it quite clear she was such a 'rebel' during her younger years but Richard had straightened her out.

She would smile at the delicate sound of Peter laughing, but then would sigh. "It wasn't the carnival I was hoping for. To my surprise as I came through, the people who would usually be on stilts were truly that tall. They had people who others assume have deformities, and I was surely shocked at first – but then I saw your Father. He came out all dashing, the only one who looked like an average human being, all adorned in a fantastic coat and grand hat."

As if on cue Richard came out to the little living area. He was a gruff man and I was the pure spitting image of him, save for the fuzz along the chin and the ever growing crease above the eyes. He was green-eyed, blonde haired, and lanky and tiny compared to my Mother. Even so, from the second he entered a room you could immediately sense a feel of intimidation about him, as if you knew the second you poked fun at him, even if it was far behind his back, you would be liable to receive a stab in the back.

"The lights were not as good as they are now," Richard grumbled out, shoving his thumbs through the loopholes on his belt. "But the first person I ever saw was your Mother. I spotted her out just as easy as a 'squito can spot out an arm to bite."

Back then we never dug too deep into that phrase. I now wish I had.

"I looked at her, met her eyes that were the same colour as mine and asked her to come up to help me out."

Next our Mother gave out a stale giggle. "I was just about as red as a tomato when I got up onto stage! I always wanted to perform in front of a large crowd but by the time I was given an offer I was absolutely scared stiff! But, my younglings, your Father helped me get over my fear within quick time."

"I could sense the magick in her, so I started up some small parlor tricks…then we got to the hard ones, the famous ol' Houdini sorts," Richard took the reins of the story, hunkering down next to all of us awed children. "We wrapped her up in chains, as snug as a bug in a rug, and plunked her into the water chamber. And wouldn't you believe it, to the surprise of everyone, even myself, she managed to cause the damned thing to actually explode!"

This time we were all laughing at the exaggerated look Richard put on as he said this.

The smallest of smiles would cross Richard's face. "She even thought about the safety of others unconsciously though, causing the sharp shards of glass to turn into harmless pieces of rubber. She stood there, soaking and free, the chains all around her in tatters, and before you knew it everyone was applauding wildly. We knew from then we needed your Mum to come and join us."

"And what about us?" Isabelle, the second oldest, would ask. Ian, also the second oldest, would nod along right from beside her and go on, "Yeah, now how did we come along again?"

Richard and Mother would look at each other, their old eyes throwing away emotions that we could never understand, and finally Mother would turn back to us, spread out her hands and from her palms would burst forth a dazzling mini show of fireworks and lights, weaving in and out around each other, the sparks and little forms of faeries dancing delicately around us and bringing us to such a state of speechlessness despite the fact we had seen it a million times over by this point.

"Magick, my young ones! You were first thoughts, then created on the wings of our magickal essence – with the help of many men because making children is quite difficult, even for the most powerful of magick users – and came to be through most beautiful of magickal events."

Magic here meant drugs.

Richard had a long line of family who were carnies. By the time he was an adult he was the ring leader so to speak, and with my Mother wanted to create the most magnificent family of magicians possible…by doping up my Mother on various substances while she was pregnant with the children of other magicians, every single one found while they were still going through the UK. It spawned off seven children.

The oldest was Allistair. He was the perfect one. He wanted to be a magician as well, and used Richard's liking over him rather than us to his advantage, torturing the younger ones every time he could. He was a prick. And every day I'm glad he flubbed the water tank act.

Next came both Isabelle and Ian, Irish twins if there were any. They were Siamese twins, connected right at the hips, and had the power of telekinesis. As far as I know they're probably selling their bodies off somewhere.

Dab smack in the middle was Richard. Jr, whose Father had been a Wales man. He was the boiling point of Richard's existence, as all he could do was see magical creatures, and nothing else. Nevertheless, he had stayed with us, and was one of the few siblings I was fond of…even though I hadn't heard from him in years.

I was next. Like Allistair I was perfect – I could do amazing feats of magick, I could control magickal creatures, but my down point was a lack of interest in preforming. I would have much rather studied all of the others in our shows – the ones that people call freaks.

Finally, there were Bruce and Peter, respectively. I took care of them as the years went on, as my Mother unfortunately fell further and further into insanity with each passing of the usual twelve months. Bruce wasn't magickal, but had a strange ability to swim like a fish, and had webs between his toes and fingers and as such was still a welcomed person to our show.

Unfortunately not long after being shipped to a different freakshow my younger Australian brother was murdered in an attack at that directed towards the freakshow; it was brought on by a religious group who claimed that they were purging the world of the blasphemous dirt that lived between those sinful walls of the massive tent.

Peter was the third one they wanted badly. Like the twins, he couldn't exactly do magick, but he was capable of telling the future at any point he wished…and for any time in the future. He could see what was going to happen within seconds and within years of a certain time. Like most, I didn't know what happened to him after I left.

I left at the age of eighteen. They wouldn't allow me to look over anyone else working in our show, so I thought of just having a normal life. I could have gone onto a normal life, one where I had a normal job, lived in an actual house, and put back the past of having to work in that awful carnival and having to see my Mother turn into a drooling idiot out of my mind.

And I managed to accomplish that.

For about seven years.

* * *

America appeared like a good place for a fresh start.

I got a job relatively easy, starting out by volunteering at certain centers before moving onto the library. I got a decently sized apartment with no problems, and I was living a nice little life, watching the creatures of this land and studying them in my free time.

Admittedly, the first two years I almost felt guilty about leaving; for two main reasons.

The first was Peter. For years I had protected him from everything our older siblings tried to place onto him. He could predict the future, but that didn't stop him from receiving bullying at the hands of Allistair, or sometimes from Isabelle and Ian. The three of them truly seemed to enjoy teaming up and making our lives as horrible as they could.

I had in fact asked him if he wanted to come, but Peter refused. He was a Papa's boy and wanted to do his best to please him by being their little crystal ball. So young had he already been so brainwashed by our parents. Fuck, Richard wasn't even his Father in the first place.

The second was for everyone else.

The 'freaks' were all nice folk. The older I grew the more I learned that our show wasn't as Mother always said it was. She explained to us that Father, kindly old Father, had brought everyone who would be made fun of and gave them a home, allowed them to show off their talents and could get paid to know they were being appreciated.

They weren't.

They were merely being made fun of. People would laugh at them, gasp, become frightened of them. They never appreciated any of the talents everyone could do. The crowds were nothing more than sweating masses of greedy, grubby-fingered people who wanted nothing more to point fingers at the overly obese lady and laugh gaily at the fact that she was so big that the stage actually creaked underneath her…or in the case of my brother, wanted to point fingers and call them all abominations that should not be allowed to exist.

A thought had crossed my mind. I could create my own carnival of sorts…one that truly gave those who didn't have any other place to call a home to live. Only those with true talents would go on, not just those who looked weird.

Yet this thought left two years after I settled into America.

That is, until the mid of summer years into my new life.

I had a habit of calling myself a gentleman and believing that chivalry wasn't dead, but I was still a healthy young male that, from time to time, was in need of a brief little flash of the woman figure every now and then, so strip clubs were not that odd for me. A so called friend of mine, Francis, had informed me of a new, more expensive, lavished club coming into town, and went so far to save up money for the both of us to see if it was worth all of the hype it was harboring.

Francis was an odd one, to be sure. He came to me because he was in a freakshow as well – one that had been solely focused on sex. The Frenchman apparently had a sex drive that could get him going on for days and days, and, according to him, had an amazingly sized dick that went far, far beyond the norms of the usual size.

When he first explained this to me I had to tell him hastily that I would take his word for it before he whipped it out. Which, by the fact he had been starting to unzip myself, I knew he was going to flash me, and seeing a giant dick was something I never wanted to view in my life.

Somehow we were…what one could perhaps call friends.

By night we were off into a steady line of people, slowly making our way into the club. To say the least, on the inside it wasn't as I expected. Merely all there were was a giant stage, a bar, and a floor for everyone to apparently stand on. There were not a chair or anything in sight…and I couldn't help but allow my lips to pull downwards into a deep, unsettled frown.

"Frog, I would say this wasn't worth the money."

Even the frog looked like he was uncertain. "Do not worry, mon ami. They probably have something spectacular on show."

"I don't believe that's going to make up for how poorly made this place is."

Ignoring that, Francis pulled me further into the crowd and we eased our way to the front. Thankfully (or not, considering the conditions of this damn place), we were one of the first few in and it wasn't all too hard to get up here. Yet, even from here the stage floor looked dusty and wretched…this was a right scam if there ever was one.

At last, everyone was in, the doors were slammed shut, and modern shitty music was floating through the air as half of the customers went straight along to the bar. Now this was more the strip club atmosphere I was used to.

At least it would have been until an announcer ran throughout the air.

"Ladies and gentleman! We thank you for coming to our opening, and we do hope that you are satisfied with the lovely array of gorgeous women we have set out for you tonight. First up on our round of ladies – this beautiful lard of lady!"

The lights dimmed and from the backstage the curtains began to separate and out came a rather large woman…as in large. Large as in the sorts of woman they would have around in carnivals, the sort of size you'd never except anyone could ever reach.

Around Francis and I the air thickened and from left to right, and to the back of us, came hollering and cat calls as the woman paraded around the stage in the same fashion that the usual stripper would…though it was quite clear she was having difficulty under the lights directed pointedly at her.

I looked at Francis and he was obviously just as confused as I was.

After she went back out came…an albino whose skin actually looked like she was molting feathers. She was a bit more sensual in movement than the first woman, breasts jutting out over prominent ribs as she worked her way around the stage and the announcer assured everyone that those were truly real feathers; even going so far as to have anyone go up on stage and touch them, maybe give a little rip or two if they were still not convinced.

Needless to say, by this point I was flabbergasted.

"Francis," I hissed as a few men went on stage to approach the red-eyed femme fatale. "I thought you said this was a strip club. This is more an eroticism freakshow!"

"I…I didn't know," the frog spluttered out, though as I was flabbergasted he seemed damn well pleased with this new girl, his eyes practically molesting her pure white form. "They were putting it off as a strip club – nowhere did it say it had ladies who were like this…not that I all that much mind this one."

It took all my power not to sock him right then and there.

"This is even worse than the carnivals," I spat out, revolted at the way that the men touching her feathers were also attempting to cop a feel at her inviting, scantily clad breasts. "Absolutely disgusting and degrading. They shouldn't be here to fuel these sick people's fetishes."

Francis didn't reply, but I guessed he would have said something along the lines of how I should quit being such a prude.

The albino was soon gone and came more women with…deformities. All of it was sickening…but for some reason my need to actually do something other than comment on it was truly fueled by the last act.

"And now ladies and gentleman, for our last performance, we proudly introduce our lovely hybrids, our beautiful creatures from both the East and West!"

Out came two this time. A blonde woman who was obviously Western, and a shorter Asian. Both were extremely different in body, as the Asian girl was rather flat and didn't have that much curves, and the blonde had the largest breasts I had seen since the large woman and was graced with rather promising curves; though that didn't stop the both of them from being the most beautiful to come out all night.

They were both definitely skinny too, that was for certain…the blonde, with her larger breast, was more noticeable as the rest of her almost looked disproportionate in comparison, the way her waist was pretty much pinched almost startling.

The only other similarities were their clothes.

Their chests were covered over by silken bras, red and blue, with delicate black symbols crossing over it. Panties of the same hue and design were propped up on her thighs…and attached to the pair of underwear were petticoats of the same colour that sealed off something to prying eyes. To add there were laced ribbons over their hair, as if covering something else up as well.

They got the usual cat calls, but the crowd went wild when they started to relieve themselves of their clothing.

The shorter woman had ears that curled inwards and prominent horns lay right up above them. The taller woman didn't have horns but she had mutated ears, ears that had shifted up the sides of her head, were pointed, and were covered over with a thin layer of fur the same colour as her hair.

The crowning moment came to everyone with the removal of the petticoats.

We were suddenly staring at…exactly what the announcer had said. Hybrids. From the waist of the Asian woman spawned the backside of a deer, complete with a small, white flagged tail and two legs ending in delicate, pretty hooves. She looked like a centaur, one that had popped right out of a story book.

The other girl didn't have as much on her – instead of a full backside she merely had a long, bushy tail protruding out of her tail bone and swaying above a perfectly rounded, firm bottom. Upon further inspection, as they got closer to the audience, I noticed that her eyes (of a strange violet hue) had pupils that were fully dilated.

They sauntered around the stage, swinging their hips and giving such lewd winks off to the crowd, and the tension in the air thickened all the more. They were beautiful, I had to admit, and even I was utterly caught up in the trance as they danced sensually around each other, their hands caressing the other's body; though for some reason or another, my eyes continued to slide right over to the cat lady, watching in fascination as her tail twisted and twined.

Then, just like that, it was over.

"Give it up for Sakura and Madeline!" the announcer crowed. And the crowd did just as he asked.

His words broke me out of my spell and I watched as the women did little bows, still adding a sense of eroticism into their movements…yet now…I could see something else.

Neither of them looked all that happy. In fact, if one looked close enough, I could have said they were downright anxious and upset about being on stage and having to flaunt around like this. My suspicions, I do believe, were deemed correct when the woman with cat features met my eyes. She instantly looked away, with something in her eyes I had seen in many carnies over the years.

Shame.

Soon enough they were both backstage and the announcer was thanking everyone again for coming, announcing that they did so well and they were so appreciative that first rounds on the giant bar were on them, bringing a sea of horny men over to get slammed as hell.

I was caught up in the crowd with Francis, who was saying somewhere that it wasn't all bad as I thought it would be.

Yet I was being seated and given a free beer, something I would have usually loved, I couldn't help but think back to that girl. So beautiful she was…so beautiful they both were…but there was such an underlying sense of melancholy that I knew that this isn't what they wanted…but, upon thinking over their size, I must assume that they didn't have anywhere else to go and needed this to get some money and food in their shriveled bellies.

Her purple eyes wouldn't escape me, even as I continued to drink myself into a stupor.

And at that moment, I decided I had to do something.

I didn't know what, but I knew I had to help these people.

* * *

**10** reviews would be nice to get the next chapter out. If people are actually interested in this in the first place.

Though of course it also really does depend on my enthusiasm and willingness to continue this, which because of recent shit, both on here and offline has been feeling...with feedback we'll eventually see. Feedback is seriously appreciated.


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